


Walking the Long Road

by Anonymous



Category: Charmed (TV 2018)
Genre: Angst, Blood, Blood Magic, Blood and Injury, Emotional Whump, F/M, Harry whumping, Immortality
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-13
Updated: 2020-06-15
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:41:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24690952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: A moment's hesitation and the path irrevocably shifts.
Relationships: Harry Greenwood/Macy Vaughn, Julian Shea/Macy Vaughn
Comments: 15
Kudos: 28
Collections: Anonymous





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> _"The spell was brutal. It extracted all of her pain and anguish over some tragic loss, so she could go on living."_  
>  \- Episode 1.04, "Exorcise Your Demons"

One stupid moment of hesitation and it all crumbles away. 

Macy opens her heart to him. She tells him of her fears and her hopes and, most importantly, her love for him. An affection for Harry that she’d fought so hard to hold on to even through all these months of distance and discord between them. An affection, a _love_ , that had been growing ever deeper since, well before the darklighter had come and turned their lives upside down.

Harry is stunned into silence as Macy tells him how she yearns for more. For all his longing for her he hadn’t actually imagined what his dreams coming true would look like. His heart begins to race with wild hope as she asks for more. His eyes are locked on her worry-bitten lips as she leans forward. But at the very last second, it’s the whispering voices of all his fears and doubts, his jealousy and resentment that Harry allows himself to be swayed by and he turns away. But only for a moment. He swears it was only for a moment. He trusts her to know what she wants. He _does_.

But action speaks louder than words and a single moment is more than enough to change the course of history whether one means it to or not.

And in this one moment when he turns from her kiss, Macy laughs. A thin, wild, _embarrassed_ laugh. A laugh that does not belie so much as reveal every ounce of her hurt and disappointment. 

For all the months of snapping and sneering at Macy’s supposed ‘sins’ that lived only in his head, the proclaiming of his ‘ _feelings’_ for her to anyone _but_ her and begging her to return to the friendship he supposedly treasured without offering so much as an apology...

Harry would give those that sought to hurt her and her sisters his time, his affection, his trust – but for Macy, who endured all of that in addition to suffering the same losses of home and power as the rest of her family? Apparently, even a single, small kiss is not something Harry is willing to give _her_.

He can feel the distance growing between them almost immediately, the tide of his self-absorbed idiocy dragging her away from him. His heart pounds and his stomach roils. He’s made a mistake. A terrible, terrible mistake that he needs to correct. _Now_.

“I keep telling myself that things are different. That I have a family, now. That I can be braver now.”

_Tell her, Harry._

“That all this,” she gestures to the space between them. The space _he_ created. “This horrible dance you and I have been doing around each other will have been worth it if I can just be brave enough to tell you how I feel, how much I love you.”

_Tell her, once and for all, that you love her. Tell her that *she* isn’t the reason you hesitated. For god’s sake, she just told you she loves you back._

“If I just choose to take all these chances with you. But…I’m never going to be the one _you_ want to seize the day with, am I? Those just aren’t the ‘feelings’ you keep telling everyone you have for me, are they? And I just haven’t been listening to you. God, Harry, I’m so sorry.”

_No, no, that’s not right. She’s got it all wrong. Go back to her and kiss her, you bloody fool! OPEN YOUR MOUTH AND SAY SOMETHING. Before it’s too la-_

But Macy is already gone.


	2. Chapter 2

Harry tries to find her, but she isn’t in any of the dozen places he orbs to and no one, not her sisters or Jordan or even that blasted Julian will answer his calls or texts. He feels for her through the connection that had bound them as whitelighter and witch. But as his mind travels frantically down its too often and too recently damaged length, Harry feels the delicate line snap. Agony blooms in every cell of his body and it sends him to his knees.

 _Cold_.

He feels so _cold_. 

And _alone_.

Even after Charity had severed his connection to his charges or after all the whitelighters had been ripped out of existence, he’d never felt so... _bereft_.

Harry blinks rapidly, trying to clear the blinding flashes of light and pain from behind his eyes. He rises unsteadily to his feet and mind still reeling, Harry draws on his power to orb himself home. He feels the magic pull him apart as it always does but even in the space between spaces the fiery burn in his lungs, the icy chill in his stomach and the tender space in his heart where his connection to Macy once resided overwhelms him. When he manages to pull his physical form back together, he looks around and sees himself not having moved even an inch.

Harry knows he has to fix this and quickly before there’s nothing left of their connection, magical or otherwise to salvage. Fear, sharp and sudden, knifes at his heart at the thought of losing Macy altogether. _No_ , Harry snaps at himself as he rebukes the very idea. He won’t let that happen. There’s still hope. She said she loved him. Of all the fools in the world, she said she loved _him_. It can’t be too late. He just has to find her, has to open his mouth and speak as he should have done from the very beginning.

A plan formulates in Harry’s mind. He’ll find Macy and explain everything. He’ll tell her why he hesitated, for fear of himself and his unworthiness. He’ll tell her why he’d turned away from her kiss. He wishes he could say it was insanity, pure and simple but in truth it was the voices of people whose motives were suspect if not downright malicious momentarily drowning out his trust in her, his ever steadfast friend, the woman he loves. And lord, does he love her _. So much_. A stupid and foolish failure to trust in her, borne of biases, racist and classist biases that he’s ashamed he still has so far to go in the way of stamping out.

If he could just turn back the clock, a year, a month, mere handful of minutes ago… Macy Vaughn could be filling his arms right now if he wasn’t such a damned weak and easily led fool. He could be kissing her this very moment and telling her how much she is loved in return. He could be…

Harry can see every possible future where they come together withering like blossoms on a blighted vine. He can see the moments dropping away into an impossible darkness, the chance to hold her in his arms and make her laugh at a terrible joke, the chance to crawl into bed beside her after a grueling day, the chance to feel her lips brush against his ear just before she slips out to the store. Gone. All those possibilities, vanished.

_Damn you, Harry, focus._

Once more Harry claws his way back out from under the shadows of his fears. He refuses to believe that all hope is gone. He needs just one more chance to mend things, to make them right for her. 

He'll apologize for everything, _everything_. For his behavior with respect to the Darklighter, Julian and god, that toxic creature, Abigael. 

He’ll do away with stung pride and finally own up to the fact that he’d been the first to put the wedge between Macy and himself with the arrival of the Darklighter. How he’d then allowed that poisonous woman to drive it even deeper. 

He’d let microaggression after microaggression slide and actual physical attacks be forgotten when he’d allowed himself to be swayed by biases he’d always professed to abhor. He'd taught entire courses on the dangers and realities of such biases, for heaven’s sake! 

Harry sucks in a sharp breath as self-disgust and guilt fill him now as he thinks on all the pain and humiliation he’d put his family through because a passably pretty, ‘English rose’ of a woman had cooed at him seductively and shed crocodile tears whenever the women that were his family- whenever Macy had voiced her distrust. 

One more chance and he swears, _swears_ that he will do whatever it takes to do better, to be better for Macy and her sisters. There is nothing he will not do to earn back his place in their family, to earn back Macy’s trust and friendship. He will dedicate himself to banishing the sorrow and doubt he’d brought into her eyes.

If the fates can allow him just one more chance, Harry swears silently to himself and to Macy wherever she may be, that for as long as he breathes she will never again have cause to doubt his love.

Thoughts finally clear and resolve firm, Harry fixes his mind on the Vera-Vaughn attic and in an instant he is home. But the scene that greets him when Harry re-materializes is one that will haunt him for decades and even centuries to come.

“No. _Nonononono._ Macy, please, love, what's happening here? What are you and your sisters doing? Maggie, please, put that knife down. Macy, darling, tell them to stop. Look, I’m here, _I’m here._ No! _Margarita Vera, you put down that blasted knife, NOW._ Melanie, no! _Stop!_ Girls, for god’s sake, _stop! YOU’RE KILLING HER!_ ”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rating changed to (M) Mature for references to blood and injury.

Harry begs and screams until his voice is raw, swearing to all three of them that they can find another way. Promising _he_ will find them another way. Harry will do anything, go anywhere if only they would set down their blades and release the maelstrom of magic they have summoned. 

Harry hisses when his hand makes contact with the flaming barrier that Maggie and Mel have erected to keep him out. He knows this magic. Remembers well how impenetrable it is. And still Harry batters at the flames, begging the witches just beyond the barrier to please, _please, girls- just listen._

The pleas of the desperate man beyond the barrier go unnoticed as the two younger witches continue carve the spell into their eldest sister’s palms. Only Macy makes eye contact with him, her sisters lost in their gruesome task and unaware of his presence.

The three sisters begin to chant in unison and Harry presses his hands flat against the barrier, the pain nearly unbearable but for the tiniest unfurling of a connection deep in his heart.

_“Macy?”_

He sees her eyes close and yet he knows without a doubt she can still hear him.

_“Macy, darling, don’t do this. We can find another way. Something safer, something… I can leave, if that’s what you need from me. Please, Macy, I will do anything you ask of me, just tell them to stop!”_

Eyes still closed, Macy gives the slightest shake of her head and a dam inside Harry breaks. The words start pouring from him, tripping over themselves as Harry makes his apologies and finally, _finally_ confesses in no uncertain terms his love for her. The skin on his palms blisters and sweat pours from every inch of him, but he cannot stop now. He tells her again and again and again.

Harry presses harder against the flames, the smell of his burning clothes and charring flesh making him cough and gag. He feels her heart pounding as if in his own chest and her own doubts whisper at him from the back of his mind.

It would be so easy to fall into that trap, to believe the words that trip so eloquently from her Whitelighter’s mouth. 

_“Believe me, love. Please believe me. I promise you-”_

So easy to let him in. Again. But, no, this has to stop. It hurts too much. After so long, a lifetime even, of being on her own, this man had become her very first friend she could show all her sides to, the scientist, the witch, the lonely orphan. On so many levels he had been the same as her, had shared the same passion and borne the same pains. And yet of all the people she’d let herself love, he was the one that had made her feel the most alone.

_“I’m sorry. Oh, love, I’m so, so sorry. I never meant-”_

They’re friends and then they aren’t and then they are again because _he_ suddenly remembers that he wants it so. He tells everyone that he is in love with has _feelings_ for Macy but he keeps running to _that woman’s_ bed and tells Macy to do the same with Julian. And she just can’t keep going back and forth with him on this. She feels like she’s breaking inside. So no, she _won’t_ do this again. She cannot let this man have any piece of her heart ever again. This has to stop **now.** Because the next time he decides that someone else... 

_“There won’t be a ‘next time’,”_ Harry rushes to assure her, willing her to see the truth in his thoughts. _“Macy, you have my word. And I swear to you, I never… Not with Abigael. What you saw? That was the extent. I swear to you, there was nothing more. I **never-** ” _ Harry’s gorge rises at the memory. _“You, Macy. I have only ever lo-”_

Her pained cries rend the air, startling Harry and sending him tumbling away from the barrier. The cold loneliness returns to sit heavily in his chest. He looks to Macy and a sob rises in him at the agony etched across her face. 

With final symbols carved the magic rushes into Macy seeking out that which she wishes to rid herself of. The edges of her wounds turn a sickly yellow before blackening and sending out bright silvery lines that trace her veins up her arms. The crimson blood that wells up in Macy’s mutilated hands pulses with an ethereal glow.

At either side, Macy is held upright by her sisters, hand gripping her arms and sides as the three continue to chant. Macy utters a pained groan and all three turn away with eyes screwed shut as the glow in Macy’s cupped hands intensifies and blindingly bright pools of light fill her palms. The blood-turned-light flows heavily out of Macy’s open wounds. It courses down through Macy’s trembling fingers into twin brass basins positioned beneath her outstretched hands.

The brass rings with power with each gleaming drop of lost love that falls. A death knell of sorts as Macy’s love for Harry, of which there was so, so much, leaves her and flows like a river from her hands until the bowls are nearly filled to the brim. Thick, shimmering rivulets course over the sides when the last of Macy’s love finally leaves her.

Harry slumps to the floor, a numbness spreading through him. He hardly feels the sizzling of his skin or smells the burning of hair as his forehead thumps against the impenetrable curtain of magic fire. How in the hell had it all come to this? How, after all they had been through, could it be ending like this?

A match is struck and Harry’s head snaps up to see Mel gently closing her barely conscious sister’s blood stained fingers over the wooden end of said match. With the last, gleaming drop of love having left her, Macy’s wounds once again well and drip with her very real, very red blood. Mel looks to Maggie before guiding Macy to light each of the bowls afire. Harry watches in impotent despair as the contents of the bowls bubble and shift into something that smolders and burns. Dark curls of smoke rise and the love, every last iota of it, is reduced to ash before his very eyes. It hardly takes more than a few heartbeats until nothing of her love or his hope is left but a few flaked bits of char and a faint wisp of smoke.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N (31 AUG 2020): Made some minor changes to Chapter 4. Might've tried to add some angst to an otherwise super upbeat chapter! Did it work? You be the judge...

Once the spell is complete Harry’s voice returns to him and he begins anew to frantically plead for Maggie and Mel to let him in. But still the two younger witches seem oblivious to his presence.

Harry bangs uselessly against the barrier, his heart thumping wildly in his chest. She’s so pale, his Macy. Her tawny cheeks having taken on a frighteningly grayish hue. They must let him in before she is too far gone, before they lose her. 

Harry watches helplessly as Maggie and Mel pull bandages from a pile beside Macy and attempt to stem her bleeding. But it’s to no avail. The bandages are soaked through almost immediately even as the girls apply pressure and more bandages and then more pressure again. They chant a familiar spell, one he himself taught them if ever they were injured and he was prevented from reaching them. Magic flares weakly over the sodden cloth on Macy’s hands before fading into nothing. Oh lord, they’d spent too much of their power on the draining spell.

He can hear Mel say, "We should get harry."

“Yes, yes, drop this bloody, fucking barrier and let me help her,” Harry replies urgently, even knowing he cannot be heard.

Macy voice is faint and he can hardly hear it over her harsh pants, “No, don’t. Please, Maggie, Mel, just try the healing spell again. Just– just try it one more time, please...” 

Maggie nods and wraps another thick bandage over Macy’s hands. Harry sees the young witch’s shoulders hitch on a sob when the spell fails and the pale bandage deepens to deep, dark crimson.

Harry hammers at the rippling, blue flames of the barrier with his fists still pleading, "Please, girls, _Macy,_ let me in!"

Macy head lolls against her sister’s shoulder and for a brief moment their eyes meet, "Never again."

It's only when Macy loses consciousness that Maggie and Mel look at each other before reaching out to douse the flames of the circle. The barrier drops and Harry races into the circle. Maggie and Mel yelp in surprise, no doubt at his seeming to appear out of nowhere.

Harry drops to his knees beside the barely breathing Macy and drags her limp form across his lap and into his arms. He folds her mangled hands in his and pulls her close as he lets his powers flow into her. Harry’s lips press into her hair and he rocks and murmurs words of comfort to her as he works to mend the damages beyond those carved into her palms. 

It takes longer than usual but soon enough she is restored to health and her eyes flutter open.

“Harry?” she asks, her voice soft and a bit dazed.

"Yes, love, I've got you. I'm here," he says pulling her tighter against him. Maybe it didn't work after all. Perhaps- 

Harry bends down and his nose brushes against the loose coils at her damp temple. He lifts away, thinking to give her space to breath but like a magnet he's feels himself drawn down once again, his gaze settling on Macy's lips. He steels himself against the onslaught of doubts sure to come but for once those voices are silent.

Macy stares at Harry for a brief moment just before he's able to reach her. The confusion creasing her brow clears and Macy's hands slap at his chest, keeping him from coming any closer. With surprising strength, she shoves herself firmly from out of his hold, tumbling off of his knees and onto the chalk dusty floor. She rises unsteadily to her feet and in an instant her sisters are at her side, holding her up as she takes a wobbling step towards the attic door. Harry scrambles to his feet, offering to help, to orb Macy to her room but his words are met with twin looks of sympathy and impassible resolve. Maggie simply shakes her head while Mel, with a softness he hadn’t thought her capable of, asks him to go wait in the kitchen.

“It’s our turn to take care of her.”

" _And we're going to do it right this time,_ " Maggie mutters without looking at him.

“But I...”

"Harry, _go."_

Mel’s voice is tired and tinged with sadness and Harry knows no argument from him will make any difference. He forces himself to look away as the Maggie and Mel ease their sister down the stairwell. Harry closes his eyes against the sight and smells of blood and magic and wills himself away.

-∵-

It’s some hours later when Harry makes his way back to the now empty attic. Looking over the gory debris, Harry sets about tidying the space. He scrubs furiously at the remains of that infernal circle that had kept him from his charges, from Macy. A stubborn marking refuses to shift and Harry’s frustration and anger boil over leaving him spitting and driving his fist at the stain. Harry hurls obscenities at the blasted thing and himself and throws the damp rag at the mark in disgust. 

Sitting slumped on the worn floor Harry grabs at his hair and scrubs at his face, desperate to beat back the hot flood of misery and shame threatening to overwhelm him as the events of the day replay again and again in his mind. In vain, all in vain.

_Fool. You absolute wretch. Harry, you useless coward. Look what you’ve done._

Minutes pass and when the haze of Harry’s grief and self-disgust subsides and his composure returns he looks down to see a thin, broken circle of silvery residue glowing faintly under his foot. Clearing his throat, Harry reaches out for his rag but finds himself hesitating. Instead of his rag, Harry pulls the pocket square from the breast of his coat and dabs delicately at the stain until the last evidence of that awful spell is gone from his sight.

_I’m so damned, fucking sorry, Macy. You deserved none of this, none of it at all._

-∵-

Not long after, when he’s back in his own bedroom for the night, Harry pulls out the square and rubs his fingers over the blood stiffened fabric, a reminder of the incalculable cost of yet another of Harry’s failures. 

Harry knows it must be fatigue, that he must be imagining things when he feels the warmth of her smile and hears her soft voice calling his name. He brushes his fingertips over the darkly shimmering stain and a calm falls over him. He can almost imagine the feel of her in his arms, her hair sweeping his cheek as he twirls and lifts her off her feet. Harry falls asleep with the square clutched in his hand and dreams of a life where when she’d smiled that dazzling, trusting smile of hers and beckoned him to her for a dance, a kiss, a lifetime with her and, without hesitation, he had welcomed it all.


End file.
